Blue Murder

When Raymond is woken up in the middle of the night by a passing Ambulance, he decides to murder his mother. He poisons her tea in the morning and takes her to the abattoir on the edge of the city where he works. That he gets away with this is due to a chain of events which are enormously out of his control; Amelia, Oliver and Barbara – none of them known to Raymond – are all, as far as Raymond is concerned, in the right place at the right time.

In order for the story to reach its conclusion, the narrative follows the stories of many different people: Oliver has recently graduated – just. Struggling to find his feet in the real world, he temps as a tarot machine fixer in the local service station, a furniture remover and a hospital receptionist; along the way, he finds love in Sally and loses the damage deposit on his hired tuxedo. Amelia, a beautiful but insecure teenager finds the happiness of altruism within the St John’s Ambulance after two failed suicide attempts and Derek, a keen golfer, has the heart attack that leads to the ambulance, which leads to the plan, which leads to the accident which saves Raymond from justice.

From the front, a tapestry tells a precise and beautiful story with intricate details meticulously woven together by skilled craftsmen or women. They are swirling narratives of reds and blues, yellows and browns, which come together, capturing a moment in something’s time – an attempt at making sense of the chaos of existence. But turn them over, and how much more accurate is their description! How much more appropriate their story! How much more interesting their narratives! Behind the tapestry exists a seemingly random, knotted mass of reds and blues, yellows and browns toiling inexorably towards their own unique stories’ end. Whatever that might be. How entangled – no – dependent is each thread on the journey of its fellow; each at once both choking and resuscitating the tale of the other.

These woven narratives are unavoidably connected to the artistic endeavours of Dippel and Diesbach. Having met at the premiere of Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’ in Arnstadt, 1703, it is their quest to find the perfect blue dye that makes Raymond’s murderous intentions possible.